Art in high school
Because I went to a Waldorf school, art was an important course during high school. This helped me develop my abilities of working with various materials like wood, clay, iron, steel or copper. I leared various techniques for woodworking, blacksmithing, coppersmithing, pottery and paining, some of which I liked more than others. Here, I will show some of my results in chronological order:
Blacksmithing
In the second year of high school, we had a course about blacksmithing where we made different shapes out of an iron rod (and in my case also a piece of steel). This includes an S-hook, a heart, a skewer and a (steel) knife. All of this by heating up a piece of metal until it is glowing red and hitting it with a hammer on an anvil.
Coppersmithing
In the third year of high school, we had a course about coppersmithing. Out of circular sheets of copper, I made a cup, a flower, a leaf and a bowl. This was done by heating up the material with a gas torch until it is glowing red, holding it in a bucket of acid, cooling it down in water and hitting it with a hammer until it loses its flexibility. Aside from which hammer to use, the surface / object you are holding the copper against while hammering plays a big role in determining the shape.
Societree
In the fourth year of high school, we could determine ourselves what artwork to make. The only requirement is that it should be related to society. Since I enjoyed blacksmithing so much, I decided to take this opportunity to use this technique once more. I created a tree with a ladder against it, the tree resembles society. The people at the bottom of the tree want to get to the top, hence the ladder. However, the ladder is missing some steps, making it impossible to climb it. Steps are being sold separately, though they are only sold at the top of the tree and they are very expensive. This means that in order to get to the top of the tree, the people at the bottom need help from the people at the top.
Final art assignment
In the sixth and final year of high school, we had another free choice for our final artwork. I wanted to go big, this time using technology. I made a collage of 15 different images / illustrations, each grouped to address different current societal issues:
- Brexit
- Extreme hunger and obesity
- The Dutch farmer protests
- 5G and Huawei
- Klimate change
For each of these issues, I made an audio fragment consisting of news items / advertisements / explaining videos about the subjects, mixing Dutch and English sources. Each audio fragment is approximately one minute, during which I programmed all individual lights behind the images to light up. In a completely dark room, you will hear an audio fragment and see relevant images light up, getting brighter and dimming again, across the whole artwork.